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F-22 Raptor Cancelled
BayaWeaver writes "Slate reports that the F-22 Raptor has been cancelled by the Senate. At an estimated price tag of $339 million per aircraft, even the powerful military-industrial-congressional complex couldn't keep this Cold War program alive in these hard times. They look very cool though and have appeared in movies like Hulk and Transformers. But not to worry too much about the future of the military-industrial-congressional complex: the F-35 Lightning II begins production next year!
As a side note, in 2007 a squadron of Raptors became deaf, dumb and blind when they flew over the International Date Line."
With the way the gov't is throwing money I'm surprised anything under a billion registers on their radar. They've probably got rounding errors (intentional or not) that could pay for a whole squadron of these.
The cost is also a little misleading. Additional units cost ~$130M each (which is still expensive as hell), the $339M figure is total program cost plus build cost divided out per aicraft. That number only decreases the more we produce. So if we ordered another singe aircraft, it would not cost $339M.
If that is the case then why don't we keep building them until they are free? As a bonus, we will have an unstoppable Air Force. Oh wait, we already did before the F-22.
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for unaccountable entities whose primary responsibility is profit.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
no it wont. it requires extensive upgrades because the RAM or the skin of the aircraft cannot survive a rainstorm. it does not have a working heads up display on the helmet. the canopy blisters and peels with exposure to sunlight. it does not communicate with other aircraft because the electronics are deficient. it requires 44 HOURS of maint for every hour in the air. the raptor is a pile of crap and will eventually be phased out.
So it is a high maintenance dry night fighter. Reminds me of my girlfriend ...
What, she also has advanced stand-off capability?
Also, an interesting point from that conversation (IIRC), was that The computer in the F22 is unhackable because It's based on 1989 IBM code, and most modern military jamming/hacking equipment doesn't know how to obstruct code that old.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
I guess this is a good time to be moving on to the F-35, then.
Oh, now you're nitpicking.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Marvellous. If ever the Russkies start a simulated war, we'll be knocking on the simulated door of the Kremlin in two weeks.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>> As far as I know, no F-22 has ever flown a combat mission.
The F-22 fought with some distinction against the decepticons in Transformers. They suffered heavy losses, but the proof of their effectiveness as shown in this documentary was enough to convince congress to keep funding the project.
There are also several novels out there that provide additional hard proof of their combat effectiveness.